


at every moment

by TheEbonHawk



Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars Original Trilogy, Star Wars Prequel Trilogy, Star Wars: The Clone Wars (2008) - All Media Types
Genre: Alternate Universe, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Angst, Angst with a Happy Ending, Canon Typical Violence, Canonical Character Death, F/M, Fix-It, Gen, Happy Ending AUs, Hurt/Comfort, Mild Swearing, Non-Chronological, Non-Linear Narrative, Skywalker Family Feels, brief Padme/Anakin, happier endings, kind of a love letter to Anakin Skywalker, mild violence, multiple AUs, varying degrees of fix-it
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-05-05
Updated: 2020-05-05
Packaged: 2021-03-02 22:40:34
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,085
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24014575
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TheEbonHawk/pseuds/TheEbonHawk
Summary: "listen to me. at every moment you have a choice."-Happy Star Wars day! This is series self-contained alternate universes centered around Anakin Skywalker and the people in his life, aka times Anakin could've done something different and got a bit of a happier ending. The dialogue or events are sometimes swapped around a bit, since this is a re-imagining of canon scenes. Comments are appreciated if you like it! And May the Fourth be with you.
Relationships: Anakin Skywalker & Ahsoka Tano, Anakin Skywalker & Luke Skywalker, Anakin Skywalker & Shmi Skywalker, Leia Organa & Anakin Skywalker, Padmé Amidala/Anakin Skywalker, Sheev Palpatine & Anakin Skywalker
Comments: 2
Kudos: 68





	at every moment

Anakin takes Padmé’s hand and smiles at her. The smile is pained and somehow hollow, even though he’s usually too sincere for his own good, and she gets the sense that despite how much pain _he’s_ in, he doesn’t fully realize how terrible _she_ feels. “Padmé, listen to me,” he implores her, drawing closer. “I can overthrow the Emperor and we can rule together.” He touches her cheek, soft and loving, but she wants to recoil. She can’t stop seeing the younglings he’s killed. 

“It can be just like you want,” he promises her, and his voice is as sweet as ever, but she knows all his promises are empty.

“No.” She shakes her head, and she’s crying. She’s never been more afraid in her life - seeing everything else fall apart around her was one thing, but out of anyone she thought she at least knew _him_. “That’s not what I want. You have to know that.”

She shudders around a deep breath. She’s trying so hard to stay strong, to think of their future and not break down in this moment. “Come with me. Let’s get on the ship and run away. Let’s go have our baby in a safe place and just be together. We can worry about the Republic another day.”

It’s a compromise, and she hates compromise, but until now she didn’t realize just how desperately she needs this family.

Anakin is shaking his head; he looks as scared as she feels. “It’s too late, Padmé. I’ve done things I can’t fix. There’s no going back now.”

“No, we’re not going back. But we can get out of here. You have a choice, Ani. At every moment you have a choice.”

She pulls his hand against her stomach, where he can feel his child kicking wildly. “Do it for your child, Ani. They need you. I need you.”

With her eyes holding him steady, Anakin finally gives in. It breaks him, but he nods, crying now because he’s messed up and he doesn’t know if he can save her on his own. He’s lost, and all he has to guide him now is her voice. She leads him back to the ship.

-

Anakin watches Ahsoka walk away, but as she gets halfway to the steps he realizes he can’t just watch anymore. “Ahsoka!”

She stops and turns, but her eyes are hard and ready to fight as he runs to her. “You can’t stop me, Anakin.”

He reaches her and pulls her into his arms without hesitation. “I don’t want to stop you,” he says, and despite how tight he’s holding her she can hear in his voice that he means it. “I want to say goodbye.”

Ahsoka freezes, then hugs him back, sighing. “You’ll be alright without me.”

Anakin chuckles, a warm and familiar sound that causes her heart to clench again and almost change her mind. “No, Snips, I really won’t. But you’ll be fine without me, and that’s what matters.” He pulls back, putting his hands on her shoulders and meeting her eyes with a soft, sincere smile. “You’re a better Jedi than any of us, and I’m so sorry we failed you.”

When Anakin sees her eyes fill for at least the third time, he hugs her again, but loosely this time, ready to let her go. “I love you, Ahsoka, and I’m so proud of you.”

She squeezes her eyes shut and buries her face in his chest, muttering ‘I love you, too’ against his robes. 

-

“You have a twin sister,” Vader hisses, his mask hiding his surprise. He thinks out loud, tries to provoke his son out of hiding, but in his mind he’s reeling at the idea of having a daughter, wondering if she looks like Padmé. “If you will not be turned, perhaps she will.”

And that angers Luke like nothing ever has. All the threats against his life, all the attempt to subjugate him, all the betrayals of his father - that simmers quietly beneath the surface, a rage fueled by sadness. But his anger over his sister explodes into a star. Now he’s not only fighting Vader. He’s finally trying to kill him.

It would have made Anakin Skywalker proud to know his children loved each other so deeply, so fiercely, and would guard each other with the most fiery anger. He should have been there to guard them himself, rather than the one hunting them.

If only Obi-Wan hadn’t kept them from him - no. No, he reminds himself, this was his fault. He has to live with it. 

But was it not his Master’s bidding that he attack his own son? He pauses, and Luke takes advantage of his hesitation, knocking him down and striking repeatedly, furiously. Anakin tries to block with his own lightsaber, but he's getting weaker, and Luke will still kill him. Perhaps he would deserve it.

His master laughs and makes his way down the stairs, coming to watch Vader die. Why should he give the bastard the satisfaction?

“Luke,” he cries, his brain not yet caught up with his heart on what he's doing.

He has to call out a second time before his son stops, tired and seething, and looks at him with a very familiar impatience. His eyes seem to be saying 'why should I listen to you now, when I’ve given you every chance?' But he says nothing. 

“Luke,” Anakin begs again. “Will you help me?”

Luke is momentarily confused, but he seems to understand what his father means. He nods, his jaw set firm. Quickly he turns, facing the Emperor instead of Vader, his lightsaber humming ominously. 

Vader forces himself to stand, his own lightsaber held in a defensive position, and they move toward the Emperor, who has realized now what they're doing and begins to laugh.

“Fools.”

-

Anakin's ears ring with the promise of power, the ability to prevent death. He could be _sure_ Padmé wouldn't leave him - she could have the long, happy life she deserved and Anakin could finally get some fucking sleep.

But something's wrong, and he knows it. He respects Palpatine, admires him, but... The hungry look in the Chancellor's eye, the way he knows too much, exactly how to get Anakin's attention. It's all too deliberate.

Anakin's used to being controlled. Treated like an object, even. He'd thought Palpatine was one of the few who would encourage him to make his own choices, but in this moment at the opera he realizes it's a lie. He could go along with it, see what Palpatine can offer. Or he can refuse to be controlled.

Palpatine gives him a look that's meant to be reassuring, to say 'I know exactly what you need, and I can help you get it'.

But really, it's smug. It reminds Anakin of the day they'd met, what Palpatine had said to him that day when he'd become barely less of a slave. "We will watch your career with great interest."

Anakin is quiet for the rest of the performance, and then after he says goodnight to the Chancellor, he goes quietly to the Jedi Temple and meets with the Council to report on Palpatine.

-

Leia's eyes may as well be steel when she's looking at Tarkin. Vader thinks he's rarely seen a being with more hatred, more anger. She's dangerous, that's certain. And she's more use to them dead if she won't give up her fellow rebels.

Tarkin is insistent, though. The man is almost as stubborn as she is. He leans into her space, forcing her to back into Vader to get away. "I grow tired of asking, so this will be the last time. Where is your rebel base?"

Organa seems to break finally, looking out the viewport at calm, peaceful Alderaan. She's hardly more than a child, but as far as she knows the whole planet as well as her rebellion rest entirely on her shoulders.

"They're on Dantooine," she says, defeated. Tarkin nods, unable to disguise his smug triumph. "There, you see? That wasn't so hard, was it?"

He turns to the officers, a wicked gleam in his eyes. "You may fire when ready."

" _What_?" Whether it was hope or naivety that made the princess concede, the betrayal is palpable. Vader has been beyond caring for so long that even though to him, wasting an entire planet seems excessive, he's not about to protest. And yet there's something about Leia that cuts right to where his conscience used to be. Or maybe it's that he reminds her of someone he's forbidden himself to think about except when he's alone.

The weight of a world on her shoulders. The pain, the desperation to not let her people down.

He remembers a girl on Naboo who dressed like a servant but fought like a queen. Leia, though, is without recourse. She has no army, no bodyguards, no Jedi protectors, and she's all but dead.

Vader remembers a time he wanted to help that girl carrying the weight of a world. He wanted to save her. He steps forward, grabs Tarkin's arm instead of Leia's.

Tarkin looks at him like he's grown an extra head. "Vader, what are you doing?"

"Stop the attack." Vader looks at the officers, hoping the blankness of his mask is still imposing even in defiance of the Grand Moff. "Hold fire. Do not attack the planet."

Tarkin pulls away from him, glaring. "I am the one in power here. We _will_ demonstrate the power of this station."

Vader looks at Leia. There is still so much anger in her eyes, but she's looking directly up into his helmet and Force, she really does remind him of Padmé. There's hope underneath that anger, fighting to the surface, waiting for a spark to ignite it. It surprises him to realize that he wants to give her that spark. 

He ignites his saber. This isn't a time for any more words so he merely acts, killing Tarkin and every other Imperial on deck in the space of a minute - enough time for someone to set off an alarm and Leia's hard look to melt into slack-jawed, wide eyed wonder as he deactivates his saber and takes her binders off. 

"Come with me," he says. "You're going home."

-

Shmi Skywalker lets out a final breath and goes limp in her son's arms. Anakin has never felt more lost in all his life.

Even through all these years away from her, he'd had the knowledge that his mother was out there somewhere, surviving as she always did. She had given him life, a name, and as much of a childhood as they could afford. She deserved so much better than dying in a desert. She deserved better than to be a slave in the first place.

She deserved a better son.

Anakin sobs as he holds her for an eternity. Only after he has no air left in his lungs and is simply too exhausted to cry does he start to move her. He lays her gently, reverently on the ground so he can stand and compose himself, think about what he's doing. He feels the burning in his heart, the anger. He wants to tear every being in this desert limb from limb, make it all pay for what's happened.

But even as his hand goes to his lightsaber, he knows there's only a few beings on this planet responsible for his mother's death, and killing any of them won't bring her back.

Anakin leaves his saber on his belt and does the very last thing he wants to do right now. He closes his eyes and he meditates.

The anger isn't going anywhere. To hells with what the Jedi say - it wouldn't be right if he wasn't angry. Nobody deserves his anger on their behalf more than Shmi. But if he kills everything he can find, it's going to change him in a way his mother wouldn't have wanted. Maybe the universe didn't care what she wanted or deserved, but Anakin does. 

He takes a deep breath. Then he picks his mother up and holds her very close to his chest.

There are a few Tuskens who try to stop him as he walks out of the camp. He reflects their blaster fire back at them and keeps walking, leaving a few burning corpses instead of a whole village. Maybe that will be enough to balance the scales without ruining his soul. Either way, he's bringing his mother home.


End file.
